


Rooftops and Parking Lots

by gnimaerd



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3114032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>”You’re married, Felicity.” “Yeah, and I appear to be having an affair. And if you’re gonna get judgey about that, Oliver, you can take your hand off my ass.” Future!fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rooftops and Parking Lots

**Author's Note:**

> So I started pondering what would happen in an Arrow!future where Felicity married Ray Palmer, and the inevitable ‘olicity having an affair’ fic was born. This all got kind of fluffier than I intended it to be but OH WELL. Enjoy, dear readers.

“Oliver.”

 

It’s not a question. Felicity doesn’t have to see his face to know that it’s there under the hood – she can recognise him by the square of his shoulders, by the grip on his bow. She knows that these days sometimes Roy, sometimes even Digg, wears the Arrow costume – if he needs to be in two places at once. But that’s Oliver, right there, across the roof of the Palmer HQ building, in this city which isn’t his, half shadowed as he prepares to throw himself down the zipline into the night.

 

She can tell, too, because of the way he freezes when he hears her voice.

 

He must have noticed that she was there, when he swept in to drive the would-be terrorists away from the gala Ray’s holding to raise money for one of his – oh, endless – charitable foundations.

 

(What Oliver’s doing in Keystone, she has no idea, and she’s kicking herself for not knowing in advance – she prides herself on knowing such things, after all, unofficially, that’s her job. She knows where they all are, all the time, or how can she keep them safe?)

 

He must have seen her in the crowd, he’s too observant, too clever, not to have swept the room, taken in the faces. So it’s not surprise registering in his stance when he freezes, it’s indecision.

 

He waits on the edge of the roof for a split second, deciding whether to jump, and leave, and just – not deal with this, with her, right now – or stay.

 

And when he  turns back toward her, just a fraction of an inch, she makes the decision for him and runs across the roof because just for a moment she wants to touch him, the idiot, and make sure he’s okay. That wasn’t an easy fight he just got himself into, and god knows if he needs help he’s not going to ask for it. She needs to check.

 

(She’s wearing a deep blue dress with tiny silver beads, like stars, picked out across the bodice and her hair is piled up on her head and she looks amazing, because of course she does – of course Oliver saw her, in that crowd. He’d have seen her a mile away. She’s _Felicity_. And he feels like an idiot for not registering the extremely strong possibility that she’d be at her own husband’s charity gala in advance of storming into the building. He was just kind of too focused on the mission, chasing down a chain of events across the course of the night that had led him into the building, registering ‘terrorist cell’, ‘bomb’ and ‘five hundred and eight unarmed civilians’ way ahead of ‘Palmer Industries’, ‘charity gala’ and ‘Felicity Smoak’s husband’.)

 

When she flings her arms around his neck it feels better than it has any right to. She doesn’t mean to do that, to hug him, but it happens anyway – an instinct, an old reflex. He hugs her back, briefly, tightly.

 

“Are you okay?” His voice is the gruff Arrow one he uses on strangers and she wants to smack him, because for god’s sake he doesn’t get to use that on her.

 

“I’m fine – are you?” She is already checking him over, quick and deft – and she glances around, to make sure they are truly alone, and then pulls him into the bright pool cast by a flood light, and pushes his hood back off his face so that she can have a proper look.

 

He blinks, momentarily blinded, and doesn’t resist when she slips her fingers under his mask and slides it off. Without it, with the greasepaint smeared across his face, with the graze fresh on his cheek, with his hair stuck out at all angles, he looks both much younger and much older than he is; naked, caught off balance by her.

 

“Are you okay?” She repeats, and he nods.

 

“Are you?” And he means something bigger than if she’s come out of the firefight unscathed.

 

She nods, too, touching where the blood is still fresh on his jaw – most of it isn’t his. This is the first time they’ve been face to face in two years, give or take. It feels normal, and it doesn’t.

 

When he bends to kiss her, she doesn’t stop him.

 

And when she goes back downstairs fifteen minutes later to find the rest of the building in too much chaos to really have noted her absence, she’s more concerned with the knowledge that she will need to find some discreet way of getting the greasepaint off her inner thighs before she and Ray get home, than with coming up with an excuse.

 

***

Oliver stays in Keystone, because of course he does.

 

Or at least, he keeps returning to the city – Felicity can’t quite track where he is all the time, much to her chagrin, but every few weeks he pops up again on the Oracle Network and every time, he’s nearby.

 

The second time they encounter each other like they did that night on the roof of Palmer HQ, it’s much like the first – clothes mostly stay on and they are frantic and rushed up against a wall in a semi-public place (a parking lot, this time), and it should be gross and uncomfortable (and actually if she thinks about it too hard, it is) but it’s also hotter than anything else she’s ever experienced and the sex is ridiculously good. He’s rough and ready and easy (not a word she’d ever have thought to associate with Oliver Queen) and this is easy, this is happening like a tide, like water rushing down stream, it’s so effortless and it feels so – absolutely – perfect that Felicity has no intention of stopping it.

 

She needs, she takes, he wants, he gives – it’s simple. Maybe ‘easy’ isn’t the right word – but  _simple_ , yes. For once, everything is wonderfully, incredibly simple between them.

 

They don’t talk, not really. But he growls her name into her throat and then _God I love you_  against her shoulder and she kisses him to shut him up because she doesn’t want to hear that, not right now.

 

***

 

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

 

“You want to stop?”

 

“I’m just saying you could take a girl to dinner once in a while.” 

 

He pauses, glancing at her from under critically low eyebrows. “You’re married, Felicity.”

 

“Yeah, and I appear to be having an affair. And if you’re gonna get judgey about that, Oliver, you can take your hand off my ass.”

 

He kisses her, which is not exactly the response she was expecting – it’s gentler than he normally is, too, but deep, and she opens her mouth for him, loses herself to it for a moment, until she feels almost dizzy. He smells like sweat and greasepaint and leather and very, very faintly like talcum powder and the expensive aftershave she knows Diggle bought him for his birthday last year. Did he wear it because he knew he’d be seeing her tonight or is it a coincidence?

 

“I love you,” he says, and she can see in his big, dumb face that he means it. “I would do anything for you, Felicity, and I don’t judge you – I am not in any position to judge you – ”  _too right, Mr,_  she thinks – “but I can’t do this like it’s something normal, like we’re… dating. Or something.”

 

All Felicity was really asking for was somewhere less cold than rooftops and parking lots to have sex in - if she could convince Oliver to come by her office after hours or - just - in general to somewhere with heating…

 

But she knows what he means.

 

“You want me to leave him?”

 

“I’m not asking you to do that.”

 

“You’d like me to, though.”

 

He would – she can see that in his big dumb face too.

 

“I didn’t start this with any expectations of you.” Is all he says, though, and she rakes her fingers through his hair, smearing the greasepaint on her fingertips.

 

“And then what?” She asks, “we get married and do the white picket fence and the kids thing ourselves?”

 

“Are you guys – ”

 

“No. I’m not having children with that man.” There’s a brutality to the way she can be honest with Oliver now that Felicity finds refreshing, if she doesn’t quite enjoy it. “I’m not bringing kids into – that. This.”

 

She sees his throat tighten. “Felicity.”

 

“What?”

 

“You deserve better.” He means that, too.

 

“I chose this,” she reminds him, quite truthfully, and he sighs and drops his head to her shoulder. In the weight of it she feels all the things they aren’t and can never be, and she turns her head enough to brush her nose to his.

 

The thing is that she’s long past the point where she can resent Oliver for any of it. She has chosen to accept this completely ridiculous, awful situation, she has chosen to be _that_ woman – the one with the lovely husband who doesn’t deserve to be screwed with, the one she’s cheating on anyway because she can, because it’s fun, because she’s in love with another man but she doesn’t want to leave her marriage. Because she worked hard for that marriage, because in its own way it means something to her, too, and because she’s not going to dissolve it for someone else – not for Oliver, not even for Ray – when and if she chooses to do that it will be for herself.

 

Yet she has chosen to act on how deeply in love with Oliver Queen she is, and this is her bed and the really awful thing is that as long as Oliver is lying in it next to her she doesn’t want any of it to change.

 

***  
  
  


“I want a divorce,” she says, over the empty dinner table.

 

She sees that hit Ray, and for a moment he doesn’t say anything and she sits in the silence, quiet, determined. In a corporate environment, the first person to talk has always lost the negotiation.

 

“Why?” He asks, and if he really wants to know, she’s going to tell him. She supposes she owes him at least that.

 

“Because I’m pregnant, and it’s not yours.”  
  


That hits him too, and she takes a deep breath as she listens to his world come down, but she doesn’t say she’s sorry, because she has promised herself that she’s done lying to him.

 

 

***  
  


Digg watches her refuse first wine and then coffee over the course of dinner, and then fixes her with a long, evaluatory look.

 

“So.”

 

“Yeah,” Felicity wraps her arms around herself.

 

“You and Ray…?”

 

“It’s not his,” Felicity says, quickly, like ripping off a bandaid, “I am initiating divorce proceedings and I am growing a fetus that is not my soon-to-be ex-husband’s. Turns out I’m not a very nice person.”

 

Diggle watches her for a moment longer, his expression impassive – even, perhaps just a little, sympathetic. “Nice is overrated. You’re irreplaceable.”

 

They drink to that – her lemonaid, his beer. And Felicity feels yet another moment of incredible gratitude that a man like this is her friend. If it’s a boy she knows already she’ll be naming him John.

 

“So…” he begins again, half an hour later, when they’ve talked about other, easier things. “You gonna tell me who the father is?”

 

She glances down at her hands – she hasn’t yet taken off her wedding ring, which is dumb, really dumb, but her first ultrasound was easier with it on.

 

“Take a wild guess,” she sighs, and John huffs a low, gentle gust of laughter.

 

“Right.” He swigs from his beer, “have you told him?”

 

“I don’t know where he is,” Felicity admits, “I was actually wondering if you had any idea.”

 

Digg shakes his head, slowly. “I haven’t seen him in a couple of weeks. He’ll come back around, though, soon enough. You know how he is. I spot him before you do, I’ll let you know.”  
  


“Thanks.”

 

He lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Are you happy, Felicity?”

 

That’s not an easy question to answer. “I’m working on it.”

 

***  
  
The thing is, she does want the baby. And the more she thinks about the baby – as long as she only thinks about the baby – the happier she is.

 

It’s not ideal, the possibility of raising another generation of Smoak with an absentee father, but Felicity can do it. Her mother did it, with significantly fewer resources than Felicity has at her disposal now. Her child will be absolutely fine.

 

_Her_ child. Felicity likes this idea; her baby. It fills her with nerves and it fills her with sunshine, too, this nebulous concept of  _my baby._ Not that she’s niave enough to assume that the concrete object – an actual helpless, slimey, screaming tiny human – will be anything but a challenge of terrifying proportions. But. She hopes, desperately, that it might also be the key to the kind of love that might _just_  stand a chance of being uncomplicated – pure – unsullied by the quagmire of the situation with Oliver, even if its entire existence is dependant on said quagmire anyway.

 

A love that is – just her own. Her own child, a project greater and more meaningful than anything her tech company will be able to produce and more than the Oracle network can ever be.

 

She can do this, though – Felicity really thinks she can. She’s told her mom and – okay – it wasn’t the easiest conversation in the world but it wasn’t quite as awful as Felicity thought it would be. Turns out that on an awfulness scale of one to telling Ray she was pregnant with another man’s child, very few conversations in her life are going to breech much past the midpoint. And her mom is excited now, too – god help Felicity, Donna is determined to come and stay for a month or so after the kid’s born and actually it’s not a terrible idea. Her mom is inexplicably awesome with babies.

 

Digg is there, too, of course, and so is Lyla and give it ten years and Sara will probably be babysitting for her – Laurel’s around, though Felicity hasn’t quite built up the nerve to have the conversation with her yet. Roy will make a great honourary uncle, and if Oliver isn’t a regular presence, Thea almost certainly will be. One way or another, this kid will be loved by enough people to keep it safe and healthy and that’s really all that matters, as far as Felicity is concerned.

 

And then it turns out that this particular foetus is female, and the first thing she thinks, unbidden, is about whether or not Oliver would want ‘Moira’ to be on the short list for names. Not that Felicity especially wants to call her daughter Moira because a) holy wow that is a legacy and a half to saddle a baby with and b) on a little girl that name will sound grandmotherly in a way that Felicity doesn’t like – but. It’s a discussion that she feels the need to have – the first decision she really knows she needs Oliver’s consultation on – names.

 

Of course the bastard has been MIA for twelve weeks.

 

He turns up only when her divorce finally hits the press. Ray could, by all rights, have gone to the media himself – have denounced Felicity as the dirty, cheating whore that she kind of arguably is and come out smelling entirely of roses. It’s the sounder business decision, rather than allowing an abrupt and unexplained marriage breakdown to spawn rumours that could harm the company’s stock price.

 

But Ray hasn’t done that, because Ray is a fundamentally decent man. They have cited irreconcilable differences and he has not released a press statement, so neither does she.

 

Oliver phones her, from an unknown number she traces to somewhere in the South Pacific.

 

“You’re leaving him.”

 

“I moved out a couple of months ago.”

 

A long pause filled with only the hiss of static and a sound that might be traffic or might be a bar fight happening in the background. “Do you… I mean. Do you want me to come over?”

 

“I’m back in Starling.” She’s never gotten used to calling it ‘Star city’. She supposes she doesn’t want to, now, either. Then she gives Oliver her address, and hangs up.

 

He taps on her bedroom window the following night, in full Arrow getup because apparently Oliver is now even less capable of subtlety than she was when they were still Team Arrow. Felicity lets him in.

 

She’s four months along and not properly showing yet – especially not under her pyjamas and dressing gown. Somehow she expects him to know, instantly, just by looking at her, but he doesn’t. He just stands in her bedroom looking awkward and out of place, glancing around him, carefully laying down his quiver on her dressing table, his bow on the chair, peeling off his gloves and pushing back his hood.

 

“This is nice,” he mumbles, as he looks around.   
  


She adjusts her glasses, and evaluates how to proceed.

 

Worst case scenario: he panics and runs. Second worst case scenario: he panics and proposes.

 

Best case scenario? She has no idea.

 

Quick, she thinks – like ripping off a bandaid.

 

“Oliver.” He looks up at her, blinking under his mask. “Can you take that off?”

 

“My – oh,” he nods, carefully pulls the mask off, smearing greasepaint. He looks naked and vulnerable without it, and faintly ridiculous because of the panda eyed greasepaint, but it’s better – more human.

 

“Better?” He asks, at exactly the moment as she says, “I’m pregnant.”

 

He blinks at her, like he hasn’t heard her. “What?”

 

“I’m pregnant,” she tells him. “It’s yours.”

 

His mouth drops open. “I – what?”

 

“Do I need to say that again or – ?”

 

“No – I mean,” the colour has drained out of his face. “Are you – sure?”

 

“That I’m pregnant or that it’s yours?”

 

The colour returns to his cheeks in a rush, blotchy red all up his neck and cheekbones, and he shakes his head, glancing away from her. “That it’s – mine.”

 

“Yes, I’m certain it’s yours.” She and Ray hadn’t had sex in two months when she conceived so yeah, nope, it’s definitely a junior archer she’s carrying around in her belly.

 

He nods, slowly, licks his lips. She’s not sure what she was expecting from him, reaction wise, but – it probably wasn’t this strange sort of stillness.

 

“How long…” he’s doing the math in his head. “Four months?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Why didn’t you…”

 

“How was I supposed to contact you, exactly?” She raises her eyebrows, “you’ve been off the grid for weeks, Oliver. I looked. Hard.”

 

“No, I know – I’m sorry.” He grimaces. “If I’d known I – I would have – are you – okay? Are you – happy? Is this good?”

 

He seems to honestly uncertain that she can’t help but feel sympathetic.

 

“I’m fine, Oliver,” she shrugs, tightly, resisting the urge to reach out to him. “Me and the baby. We’re fine. You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to. I can raise it. Her. It’s a girl.”

 

“Girl,” he repeats, dumbly, scrunching up his face. “Right.”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“I’m…” he hisses, through his teeth, abruptly. “Who else knows?”

 

“Just Digg. Well, I mean, and my mom and my doctor – and I told Ray. I had to tell him.”

 

“Does he know I’m – ”

 

“No. I mean – no one except John knows it’s yours. Mom’s going crazy cause all I’ve told her is that it isn’t Ray’s – But I just… I can’t deal with the drama, trying to explain to her…”

 

“Felicity,” Oliver spreads his hands, “the target this paints on your back – my enemies – if… if anyone knew I had a – daughter – ”

 

His voice cracks on the word. Great. Worst case scenario it is, then. Felicity sighs, just softly, to herself.

 

“You’d rather I let the world think it’s Ray’s? Cause I’m not doing that,” she folds her arms, “primarily, I’m not doing that to her. You really want to watch a repeat of what happened to Thea? And also, frankly, I think our child deserves to have as much family in her life as possible and that will include Thea, so help me god, because Thea will be exactly the kind of cool aunt who can explain sex and drugs and rock and roll should our daughter turn into the sort of teenager who needs these things explained to her. And let’s face it – her father’s side of the family isn’t bringing a wealth of impulse control and sound decision making skills to the genetic table, here, so she’s probably going to need a cool aunt for when I’m decidedly not her cool mom and she’s starting to consider the practicalities of acquiring her first DUI.”

 

And something about that speech makes Oliver’s mouth quirk, his eyes flicker. Felicity has clasped both hands to her abdomen over the swelling that he can’t really see yet, and now she drops them, too conscious of his gaze on her.

 

“Okay.” He says, after a moment, quietly. “Okay.”

 

“Okay you’re good with letting Thea be the cool aunt, or okay you’re coming to terms with the distinct likelihood of DUIs in our child’s future?”

 

Oliver laughs, shortly. “Okay – I am… in. In – whatever – capacity…” he waves a hand, awkwardly, “whatever capacity you want. I mean – do you… want me? Involved?”

 

“Yes, Oliver,” Felicity rolls her eyes, “you think the girl who was abandoned by her father wants her daughter going through the same thing? I want you here. With me. Raising this child.”

 

“You mean,” Oliver ventures, cautiously, “together?”

 

Felicity shrugs. Isn’t that the hundred million dollar question? Deeply, unfathomably and completely against her better judgement she loves Oliver – it’s an emotion – a state of being – she’s so used to that she’s fairly sure it’s been worn into her skin, like grain in wood – it’s not going anywhere, not ever. But that isn’t quite the same thing as wanting to raise a child  _with_  him, within the context of a romantic relationship. He’d be a good dad, she’s pretty sure – even if he clearly isn’t so sure of any such thing himself. But. God what the hell kind of family unit would they form?

 

Better not to think that far ahead.

 

“One way or another we’re going to have a small, stupid and helpless human being in common for a really long time,” she offers, after a moment. “It doesn’t mean we have to be – together – together but. I would like us to try to parent her like a team – like. You know. A family. You get a place near by, we share custody, we – ”But that all seems so clinical. She grits her teeth, exhaling softly. “I want you involved, Oliver.”

 

He nods, slowly. “Okay.”

 

“You do have to commit, though,” Felicity folds her arms, lifting her chin, “If you can’t, fine, go, we’ll be fine. But if you decide to stay now, you can’t bale in a couple of years the moment something freaks you out – the moment you think it would be ‘safer’ to leave or whatever. You will not be dropping in and out of her life the way my dad did to me, you will be here, in Starling, with us, until our tiny helpless human being is eighteen – if you can’t do that, then you need to go now, and not come back.”  
  


It’s coming out more jumbled than she means it, but she hopes the sentiment is clear.

 

“Okay,” he repeats, “can I – think about it?”

 

“You’ve got five months.” She wraps her arms around herself. “Think hard.”

 

He begins to gather his stuff, putting his gloves back on, his mask. She watches, mutely. As he goes back to her window, she clears her throat.

 

“Oliver?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Do you want to call her Moira?”

 

He freezes, his hand on the sill. Then he glances back at her.

 

“Ah. I mean. It would be good if you could maybe work – Dearden, in there, somewhere. Mom’s maiden name, and it’s Thea’s middle name so it’s more of a – thing, I guess. But. I mean. Not Moira. I’m not even sure mom would have wanted her grandkid saddled with her legacy. She spent so much of her life trying to free Thea and me from her mistakes. You know?”

 

Felicity nods, relieved. “I know.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Dearden, though?”

 

“Yeah. I mean. Only if you want to.”

 

Felicity nods. “Okay.”

 

“Right. Okay. I’ll – see you soon.” He pauses again, though. “Have you told Thea?”

 

“No. But I will if you – if you’re not gonna. I just figured you’d want to.”

 

She also figures that whether or not Oliver tells his sister will be her first clue as to whether he’s actually going to stick about.

 

“Okay then.”

 

***  
  


A gift basket of tastefully gender-neutral baby items – most of them in impractical shades of cream and off-white but oh well – turns up at Felicity’s office the next day, alongside a small flower arrangement. The card insists it is from Thea  _and_  Oliver, though it only bears Thea’s handwriting.

 

It’s a good sign, though, Felicity decides, firmly, and asks her assistant to put the flowers in water whilst she wonders where to put the baby items before too many people spot them.

 

(Oliver stays. More or less. And they are together, more or less. And it’s worth it, more or less, the whole damn time).


End file.
